


Predator and Prey

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:30:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2082126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The assassin follows Irene Adler.  This is the job.  Irene Adler slowly slides under the assassin's skin.  This is, and never was supposed to be part of the job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Predator and Prey

Irene Adler’s nails are long and red. They glimmer like slices of blood in the moonlight as she adjusts her black fur coat over her hair. It is New Years, and she is a vision and yet she melts into the backdrop of London. She lifts her mobile up and stares at it. The light from its screen shines across her face, a blue illumination in the darkness. Her lips curve into a smile at what she reads. The assassin was told that Irene Adler was beautiful. The pictures did not do the woman justice, of course. Certainly not her smile. An all-knowing, all-powerful smile of someone who is far crueler and far more calculating than her peers. It isn’t the assassin’s place to make such wild assumptions, of course. The assassin is only supposed to watch at this point.

Irene Adler’s nails are a violent purple. She swirls them across her lips, painting them some strange shade of blood that is only vaguely familiar to the assassin. She is meeting with a client. She has not completely closed the curtains. This small slice of space has offered the assassin a view to her entire home. With only a quick movement of the telescope, the assassin can see bed, closet, table. Irene Adler thinks her life is closed, but to the assassin, it is not. The violent purple nails match with the violence she offers to her clients, and the assassin finds this appropriate. The assassin can see the nails carve red lines into pale skin, trace wrinkles across dark flesh. She doesn’t care who she touches, so long as her touches _influence_. The assassin is influenced far too much simply by watching. There are nights---too many nights---that the assassin thinks about Irene Adler’s fingernails digging into flesh, and imagines them there. Mimics the feel, the scraping sensation against skin. The assassin’s nails are far too short to be Irene Adler’s, of course, but the very fact that a fantasy is occurring----it’s a problem. But she is enticing, of course. The mystery and eroticism of Irene Adler. That was something the assassin was warned about.

Irene Adler’s nails are a neutral gray. They tap impatiently against a wine glass as she waits for Jim Moriarty at a café in Paris. They have met once before, of course, and the assassin imagines this will be their last meeting. Irene Adler does not seem to care for Jim’s _games_ , though she finds him useful. The assassin despises Jim Moriarty, and truly wishes that an order would come through for his execution sooner rather than later. Irene brings the glass to her lips, and she leaves behind a bright red mark of lipstick. She swirls her fingertip across the edge as she speaks, and the assassin imagines her voice. Dark? Light? Quiet? Accented? From the distance the assassin stays, it is so very difficult to tell. The assassin imagines Irene Adler has a low voice. Husky. Powerful only when necessary. The assassin has seen her when she is alone. Irene will read quietly, or study. She has no need of unnecessary power. By the time the assassin pulls out of that thought, Irene is gone. No matter, she is easily found. The assassin goes to the table, where the glass has been left. How easy it would be to lift it, to taste that dark red lipstick. And what would it be like, to taste that mouth? The glass remains where it sits on the table. It is, perhaps, a shame that the assassin is only supposed to watch at this point.

Irene Adler’s nails are a sparkling gold. She has taken herself into a club, presumably to meet a client who prefers a different kind of woman than the kind she usually is. Or perhaps she is gaining more information. The assassin follows, of course the assassin follows. Irene Adler’s hair is long, tumbling down her back in soft ringlets. It is such a different vision than what the assassin has seen before. Before, Irene Adler’s hair was up, in tight and controlled twists and buns. No ease, no comfort. Not from the dominatrix who controls everything (even, in some ways, the assassin). Now, she is radiating comfort like it is a commodity she can give away. It’s a play, of course. A ploy. The assassin can appreciate it, though it would be better appreciated outside of this club, where she could be better watched. She bounces to the music that blares throughout the club. Bounces, bounces, and vanishes into the crowd. She does that often, blends in and away. The assassin always finds her again.

“Do you want to dance?” Her voice is low, and yet seems unnaturally powerful despite the loud music surrounding them.

The assassin turns, and Irene Adler’s golden fingernails are up, running into the assassin’s hair.

“Mmmm, your hair is soft,” she says. She is pretending to be high, perhaps? Her pupils are dilated, but it is dark in this club.

“No thank you,” the assassin replies.

“Are you sure you don’t want to dance? I can be very nice,” Irene says. Her grip changes, and she takes a fistful of blond hair. The assassin could fight back, but doesn't. “Or perhaps you should stop following me. I have my own plans, and they don’t involve you or your employer. You can tell him that I want to be left alone, if he knows what’s good for him.”

The grip is gone instantly, and Irene Adler turns away without even a second glance at the assassin. The assassin goes outside to wait for her to leave. She does, of course, at six in the morning. Well worth the wait. The one who wants Irene followed isn’t worth calling. The assassin knows that the job would still be to watch at this point.

Irene Adler’s nails are square and crimson. She is standing before Mycroft Holmes’ house. The assassin does not know what occurred in there, but this is a very different woman to the one who went in only a few hours prior. She has no confidence, no smug smile on her face. Every single minute detail of her stance has changed from one of a predator to one of prey. She is afraid. Afraid of something. Her eyes drift up, and she looks directly at the assassin. The fearful look in her eyes fades, and she walks securely over to a taxi. The assassin knows that Irene Adler is still afraid, but Irene refuses to let anyone else know she is afraid.

A text appears in the assassin’s phone. _The time is now._

Irene Adler’s nails are broken and clear. The assassin should feel nothing about this, of course. She has her head covered with a bag, and the assassin has done as promised, delivering her to Karachi, keeping her unconscious for most of the journey. She fought back, of course, and killed several of the assassin’s hired men, but that was expected. She never saw the assassin’s face, and that keeps the employer safe. That is the job, after all. The job is everything.

Sharp, short nails dig into the assassin’s arm.

“I know it’s you,” Irene says, her voice muffled through the bag. “And I always have someone on my side exactly when I want them. You won’t kill me now.”

“So says you,” the assassin replies.

Irene shakes her head, and the assassin imagines her face. Not the way she looks now, not dirty and gaunt and broken. No, the assassin imagines her face the way it was, with the blood lipstick and the tightly wound hair and the colored nail polish.

“You don’t want me to die, either,” Irene says. “I’ve been watching you. I know what you like.”

When the assassin turns, Irene Adler has aimed herself, and even with a bag on her head, has aimed a kiss. The assassin can taste her fouled breath through the cloth of the bag, and can almost feel her chapped lips. This kiss is not loving, it is not aroused. It is a kiss of pure desperation. It tells the assassin that Irene Adler knows, she _knows_ and should be saved.

Before the assassin can respond, there is a bang, and the door to the car is opened. And, like that, she is pulled away. Gone. Gone to be killed. Beheaded. This is the job. This is how it is supposed to be. Her hands, her long fingernails, her hair, her lips---they will be gone.

The assassin only thinks about turning around for her once. 

Just once.

Getting out of the business isn’t easy, but it happens. It takes years. _Years._ It does happen. The assassin leaves the country. Gets a real job that pays less than one hundredth what the business did. Falls in love. Gets married. Pretends to never think about Irene Adler again.

Irene Adler’s death is featured in online blogs and the occasional report. The assassin doesn’t think about it anymore, because the assassin isn’t the assassin anymore. Not really. The assassin is a normal person. An ordinary person. And Irene Adler was only a job.

Until one day. One day, when that voice appears behind the assassin. Suddenly, unexpectedly as the assassin was leaving a hospital room. A voice that is low and husky and quietly powerful.

“It was you.”

She is behind the assassin. Suddenly, there. Suddenly, that voice. The assassin freezes before turning around, before looking. Before believing it.

Irene Adler’s nails are long and red. They glimmer like slices of blood in the dim light of the hospital corridor. She’s aged, like some sort of a human, like four years actually happened to her. Like she survived. In her hands, she holds a single red rose.

“You’re alive,” the assassin says.

“You shot him,” she replies. “Him, Sherlock. It was you.”

The assassin turns, looking at the room she has just exited. Negotiating for Sherlock’s silence is probably impossible, but if he just won’t _tell John_ then everything will---then it will be---

“I didn’t intend to kill him,” the assassin says. It is amazing how quickly she becomes the assassin again in Irene Adler's presence. How quickly the façade of normalcy fades.

“I believe you,” Irene replies. 

She takes two long strides towards the assassin and looms over her. Her long, red nails run up into the assassin's short hair, gripping it. The assassin could fight the pull, of course, but doesn't. No, the feeling of Irene Adler's hands in her hair brings to mind days watching her have clients through slivers of curtain, of tracing her own short fingernails down her thighs and imagining Irene Adler's, and of staring at the red marks on glasses left behind and imagining Irene Adler's mouth.

The assassin has John, and will kill to keep John. The assassin loves John with every ounce of her heart. Almost every ounce. There is a sliver, the size of a fingernail, that Irene Adler has claimed.

"You will not come back here," Irene Adler tells the assassin. "You won't talk to him again."

The power in her voice. The authority. It shouldn't---it's an embarrassment how it affects the assassin. Her knees go weak, and she lets out a short breath. Perhaps it is because it has been so long since she has seen Irene Adler. Perhaps it is because the assassin forgot how much she _wanted_ it. Perhaps because, back then, she wouldn't admit it. 

The assassin's eyes drift closed and she just, just for a minute _enjoys_ this. Enjoys the wanting.

"I told you I knew what you liked," Irene Adler says, and her voice is a different tone now. Something lower, something almost a purr. "But I also know how to stop you."

The assassin's eyes snap open. There is want, but then there is need. The last time Irene Adler was in her life, she needed the work, she needed the job. Now, she needs John. Perhaps one day they'll----and then, Irene---

The assassin reaches up, taking ahold of Irene Adler's hand. She pries her grip free easily, and moves it away from her hair. Irene Adler's nails are smooth under the assassin's rough touch, and her hand is soft despite how long and sharp it appears.

She continues to hold Irene's hand. Just for a moment. To _indulge_.

"It's a shame, Miss Adler," the assassin says. "Because that was a very good threat. And I know threats. But we both know you can't do anything."

She releases Irene Adler's hand. 

"You're only supposed to watch at this point."

John will be here any minute. It's time to go. Time to be Mary Watson. She walks onwards. When she glances back, the red rose is in Sherlock's window, but Irene Adler is gone. Vanished into thin air. She does that, often.

No matter. The assassin will find her again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sherlock rarepair bingo. The prompt was "Hands".


End file.
